Historically, the preparation of quotes and proposals for customers or potential customers has been laborious. Automation has not been applied to the preparation of quotes and proposals, wherein a user may produce an electronic quotation and/or proposal for review and acceptance or modification by a customer or potential customer.
Moreover, it has been found that customer acceptance has been relatively low with respect to viewing quotes and proposals at a network site. Unlike an electronic shopping cart, a quote or proposal is typically prepared for an individual person or company, and the contents of the quote or proposal are typically private. To maintain privacy, it would have been previously necessary to require the customer to log into the network site in order to avoid indexing and subsequent access by web search engines. Customers and potential customers have been found to be resistant to presenting login credentials such as a username and password.
Moreover, even with the use of applications such as word processors or presentation software, it has not been possible for a non-sophisticated user to easily design and/or select proposal content and/or branding of the proposal for a customer.
What is needed is a system and method that can automate preparation of a proposal, make it easy for a non-sophisticated user to select branding and content of a proposal, confidentially present a proposal on a network such as the Internet in a way that does not require a customer to present login credentials, and provide controls for receiving feedback, modification, and/or acceptance of the proposal by the customer.